Birmingham Museums Collection Open Day
 

Thanks to sparkright's tip off I went to Birmingham this morning to look around the giant Museums Collection building in the city and see the two engines stored there, Aveling & Porter 2992 and Burrell Tractor 4084 "Busy Bee".

I can remember Busy Bee in steam at the old Newhall Street rallies and I was told the Aveling used to go to events under it's own steam in years gone by. Some of the museum staff told me that budgets have been slashed within the City Council and they don't have funds to even advertise the open day events externally anymore so the likelihood of the engines being brought back to a steam again seems remote at best. Maybe one day, they are both notable engines for their own reasons.

Completely impossible to get good photographs of them so surrounded by other items. I had to go beyond the yellow line painted on the floor to get the photographs that I did, which got me a telling off by the hi-vis jacketed museum employee.

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I wouldn't be surprised if Dave (Busy Bee) on here is on his way down to try and buy the Burrell "Busy Bee" now...:D

Good Luck Dave.:p


Cheers

Tez

Some nice lumps of coal in the roller bunker !. :D

:)

It's a shame they are standing in a museum collecting dust when someone could be having hours of pleasure with them on the road and rally field !.*cry

Cheers

Tez

Thanks David. We didn't go in the end. Too much to do before our first outing and not enough spare days! Shame about the hi-vis telling off but you got some nice pictures.

Busy Bee looks good

It was fine, we had a good chat about the old Birmingham rallies and how much they we missed them. He wasn't much of a steam man so I was telling him about how Mr Holl operated engines commercially long before Busy Bee was preserved.

The Commentator has sent me the following pic to post of 2992 during it's time in Newhall Street. The engine was surrounded by exhibits when it was in there and had fixed trunking attached to the chimney to allow it to be lightly steamed from time to time - consequently he thinks it is a very long time since it has been out on the road.

Interesting to compare it in this picture and the ones I took of it yesterday.

http://www.steamscenes.org.uk/tth/12/2992.jpg

There is a picture of 2992 being delivered to the museum in "A Hundred Years of Road Rollers". I seem to remember reading that Mr Hunt of The Leader/Griffin/Wait & See fame was involved somewhere along the line?

That Burrell winched the the museums Coranation Pacific into place in the original museum.

the burrell must be one of the last gold medals made...?

Adam,

Gilbert has it listed as the last GMT being built 28/11/27. The interesting comment is that it was built using an altered 8 ton roller boiler.

John

Waste of a couple of lovely engines there!

After a conversation with another TT member he tells me that Frank Holl purchased "Busy Bee" just after WW2 still in original Burrell paintwork and it was not repainted during his ownership, so this must be one of the very few Burrell still in works paint.

Where's the Ruston portable these days then??
Is it in the Thinktank along with the Foden??

ruston is in the think tank apparently recently restored by these people http://www.heritageengineering.com/eng_04.html, but not been steamed since....
i believe having spoken to bham museum and currently working on their watermill down the road, that there may be posibilities for the burrel and aveling to be repaired (both need boiler work) to steam but money has been frozen since the swing to labour in the recent council elections. i gather now there is no prospect of this happening i will ask the question, though as i do have an ear currently. maybe one or both could go out on loan?

I personaly think that the Burrell should be left where it is.

There are more Gold Medal Tractors than anyother type left wich we see out and about, many of wich have been superbly returned to ex works condition.

Busy Bee on the other hand is probably the closest representation we have to one that is in its working condition.

If it were stripped and rebuilt I think it would be very hard to maintain its character without dammaging it.

Where it is it is looked after its not going rusty and hopefully one day it will be on a better display.

As a rule I detest the generic museum attitude to exhibits, but this time I think they got one right!

Like I said, waste of a good engine.